I am your typical housewife living in high maintenance suburbia. I have a handsome husband, 2 kids and a flock of pet chickens. I try and feed my family with $100 a month. With the help of coupons, gardening and bartering I am able to squeeze the most out of our grocery budget and still manage to have a little fun along the way.

Do You Need an Ordinance to Eat Local?

The links in the post below may be affiliate links. Read the full disclosureBy Mavis Butterfield on June 6, 2016 · 8 Comments

My month of eating local has taught me one thing: I would much rather buy fresh vegetables and eggs from my neighbors than a grocery store. According to an article on Treehugger, several towns in Maine feel the same way. They have taken a stand on their right to eat local.

In response to laws passed by federal agencies that put restrictions on what farmers could directly sell to consumers {without food inspections, etc.}, Hancock County, Maine took matters into their own hands. They drafted a city ordinance that reclaimed their right to sell raw milk and butchered chickens to their neighbors. It passed, and 15 towns followed suit. According to the article, ‘“Under the local ordinances, local food producers are exempt from state licensing and inspections governing the selling of food as long as the transactions are between the producers and the customers for home consumption or when the food is sold and consumed at community events such as church suppers.”’ While the article mentions that the ordinance is largely symbolic, it does show that people expect to have the right to feed themselves {and provide food} in any way they see fit.

I thought about the flip side of this argument for awhile, and do understand where the federal regulations came from. It’s hard to manage butchering processes and food safety when there aren’t regular inspections, but I still trust small scale and backyard farmers over mass-produced food any day.

What do you think, do local farmers have the right to sell their food directly to consumers without all of the red tape?

Comments

We eat Farmers Market all summer as we have very sandy soil , fight with deer, rabbits to stay out, and now have gotten tired of it all, so I just go in Saturday with a list. I spread my $30 among the 8 vendors. Love it!

I think that there needs to be some kind of protection to ensure the cleanliness and quality of the products farmers produce, but beyond that government oversight should be minimal. For example, if a customer wants to buy raw milk from a farmer, I think the government should get out of the way. However, the farmer also needs some protection from a lawsuit, if that customer gets sick from the milk. After all, the customer should know the risks when purchasing the milk.

I wish it was easier to buy local where I live. Here in CO there are a lot of farmer’s markets, but the prices are sky-high. I tried them last year and just couldn’t afford to pay $20 for a single roasting chicken (not very large) and $6/lb for tomatoes. I can buy many local products in the grocery stores, but their prices are only somewhat better. I feel badly, but most of the time I have to stick with products sourced elsewhere.

I think we should be able to buy directly from the farmer. We garden and grow as much as we can here in Texas. Our local grocery store also buys from farmers and resells the produce. We also have road side vegetable and fruit stands here. I love fresh veggies and fruits. Locally grown is better to me. I also believe that you should be careful about what you buy and who you buy it from. I like to know the grower and where they are located. But this is just me.

As a farmer in commercial production, currently implementing all the food safety standard operating procedures required, I always find it a paradox that people consider locally sourced, small farm grown produce is safer. They are plenty of things in the dirt that will make you sick, and more easily than any pesticide residue people fear is on their commercially produced food. You should see the requirements we must meet! We document everything applied to our crop, and prove that is done to the highest safety standards. Irrigation water is tested to prove there are no microbial pests. Soil amendments are documented and application limited to appropriate pre-harvest intervals…I could go on and on. We are a small 50 acre raspberry farm, and our Good Agricultural Practices manual has a hundred pages. This isn’t happening on your little local growers farms, but they are considered safer. Please understand that I am not saying that they are producing unsafe food. I’m saying the characterizations on commercial agriculture is not fair.
Also, as far as an ordinance is concerned, it seems to restore people’s right to farm and sell their products, and I appreciate that. They are bringing back freedom for the market to determine what people can buy and consume. I just hope that the people who want to buy these local, unregulated products understand that they are assuming a risk when they do this. If I were a local farmer, I might be reluctant to take the chance of being sued when something goes awry.

These are good reminders. For myself, I would like to buy local simply to support local farmers and my state economy. It never occurred to me that it might be safer or not. I do wonder, however, if local food might be safer in some instances simply because it is handled less, due to it’s shorter commute to my table.